Still Around
by cj.sharpiequeen
Summary: Kurt is heartbroken, but can it last? Is it possible to feel so much pain, to be this sad without good reason?


No one had expected anything to go wrong that day. It was a beautiful day, the sun was bright, the Warblers had regrettably lost Regionals to New Directions, but their spirits re high. They'd been eating a last lunch together on the grounds of Dalton before they parted ways for the summer. Kurt Hummel sat close to Blaine Anderson. The dark haired leads arm was around the countertenor. No one had expected the day to end any way other than peacefully.

But Kurt, half engaged in conversation with one of the others, and half attentive to Blaine's fingers drawing shapes and letters on his shoulder, was the first one to notice something was wrong. Blaine was shaking. Kurt turned around quickly, eyes going wide. Blaine was seizing. He remembered laying Blaine on his side, and holding his head, screaming for someone to call 911.

_Go ahead and turn around_

_I'm drunk and so is everyone else_

_In this devil town._

It was Kurt who sat by the dark haired boys bedside, clutching his hand, wearing clothing so worn they would never be ironed flat. It was Kurt who cried at night, when there were no nurses around, who begged Blaine to open his eyes. It was kurt who was there, tired and scared, when Blaine's parents arrived three days after their son fell ill.

And it was Kurt who was quickly ushered out of the room when they did. Blaine's mother stayed with the boy while Blaine's father walked him out. "Thank you for staying with him, Kurt. I think it's time for you to leave."

Kurt protested, "No, Mr. Anderson, really, I'd-"

"Kurt." The man said in a dark voice, "I think it's best if you leave."

So it was Kurt who left, heart broken, and worrying for Blaine, who returned to Lima, a wreck of a boy, sitting by his phone day and night waiting for news that would never come. It was like losing his mother all over again.

_They wont let me turn around_

_to get one last look at my baby_

_while he's still around._

Kurt didn't hear until three weeks after the fact that Blaine had died. The seixure had been an aneurysm, and Blaine had never recovered. Kurt went into shock when he heard the news, in utter disbelief that Blaine had died. His Blaine. His adorable, dapper, sweet boyfriend was gone.

Boyfriend. He had cherished that word. They had just started going out, the day of Regionals, but it felt like so much longer. It felt like so much longer. It felt like they had been together since the day they had met, Since the day Kurt had become Blane's teenage dream. And He hadn't even gotten to say goodbye.

Kurt cried for hours, days, weeks. He lost track of time, crying in his bedroom with his door locked. He'd alternate between crying in sleeping. If he slept, Blaine was there, in their first teary kiss, every time they held hands, the one perfect night they'd spent, just tracing each others faces, laying in Blaine's dorm, ignorant to anything but the sound of each others breathing.

_Go ahead and build it up again_

_This city's just cemeteries and_

_Forgotten me_

Kurt returned to Dalton in the fall, for his senior year, but it was never the same. People looked at him as that boy who lost his friend. None of them understood what he felt, the feeling of having someone perfect thrust into your life and then torn out of it. They started to exclude Kurt from things, unable or unwilling to deal with the pain in Kurt's eyes.

So Kurt became a ghost of the boy he had once been. He walked the halls of Dalton, in his perfect uniform, with his perfect hair, just like everyone else. He kept grades high enough in classes to avoid persecution and low enough to avoid recognition. He kept his head down, and his nose out of everyone's business.

He quit the Warblers. He walked into the club room and saw the pictures from regionals, of he and Blaine singing to each other, smiling, holding hands. He took one look and then turned around and walked out. The Warblers didn't fare as well that year, having lost their first and second soloists.

From that day on, Kurt Hummel swore he'd never sing again.

_My only hope's to see you_

_And even if I never do_

_While you're still around_

Kurt graduated form Dalton Academy and went to the NYU school of fashion. He wouldn't pursue dreams of singing, he'd never sing again. No, not without Blaine. He took up drinking as a hobby, finding that drinking himself into oblivion was the only way he'd ever get through the pain. He went to classes during the day and came home and drank. He drank and wrote music he would never sing.

He carried on with life. He flirted, went out, danced, and lived life. But the boy he'd lost was always on the back of his mind. HE had never gotten closure. He had never taken the boys cold hands into his, kissed his cold lips goodbye. He had never gotten his fucking closure.

Finn and Rachel came to visit him for Christmas. They quizzed him on how life was going. They played 20 questions until Kurt had answered every conceivable question. Except anything to do with Blaine. He couldn't even say the boys name.

_And I know what you're thinking_

_But that wont stop this drinking_

_It's the least I can do_

Kurt was walking through the park during the spring of his freshman year at the college. It was peaceful, and quiet. It was just like the almost-summer day on which he had lost his best friend and boyfriend. And himself. That above all else was what Kurt has lost the most. He had never fully recovered and was quite convinced he never would. That kind of love only happens once, the pure, perfect love he'd had.

It was quiet when he heard it, the casual strum of the guitar ad the voice. It was the voice that stopped him in his track, frantically searing for the sound. He looked around and finally located the source of the sound, and when he did his heart stopped beating.

Sitting under an oak tree, in a pair of tight jeans and a fitted white t-shirt, dark curls a mess atop his head, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing lyrics to no song Kurt had ever heard was Blaine Anderson. Kurt stared, stared and studied him long enough that the boy looked up.

And when Blaine's gorgeous hazel eyes met Kurt's, Kurt began to cry, frozen in place.

Blaine stood up, taking the first step forward, hesitantly, "K-Kurt?"

Kurt nodded, "B-Blaine? H-how? Y-you're d-dead!" He was sobbing, entire body wracked by tremors.

This had to be a joke, some kind of cruel, cruel joke.

Blaine's eyes teared up, "My parents told you I died?" He scoffed, "Kurt, When I woke up I was in Washington State somewhere. I asked about you. I asked. They gave me number after number and I'd call and it w-wasn't you. I—they-I as confused, Kurt. I tried. I tried to find you. They didn't want me to find you." Blaine was sobbing now too.

"T-then how are you here? How is this real?"

"New York. I knew if you'd go anywhere, you'd go to New York. So I came here as soon as I turned 18. I've been waiting, watching. I—I didn't even know if you'd want—I'm so sorry. I tried." Blaine dropped the guitar, dropping to his knees, face in his hands, body wracking with sobs.

Kurt stared at him for a long time. This had to be wrong. This was a dream. It had to be a hallucination. Kurt walked over to Blaine, still sobbing, and dropped to his knees before him, touching the boys shoulder, "You've been searching for me for two years?"

"My parents didn't want me to find you. They, they didn't want me to go back and be with you. They said if I was going to be with a boy it wasn't going to be some mechanic's son. But you were all I wanted. I tried Kurt. I trie-"

Blaine never got to finish because Kurt pressed their lips together, and in that moment, nothing else mattered They matted. Each other and the taste of their mouths and the feel of the tears, the shaking in each other. The realization that they weren't alone anymore. That was all that mattered. That in that perfect moment, they were together again, at last.

_Cuz this life_

_Is anything but certain_

_When they close the final curtain_

_You'll get a glimpse of the truth_

_'Cuz you're stll around_

It would be Kurt who would actually die first, years later in their Miami home. Blaine had refused to leave Kurt's side once he found him, that day in the park. His parents had given him an ultimatum, his inheritance, or Kurt, and he had chosen Kurt. None of it mattered without Kurt.

Blaine got a record deal and recorded a number of CD's over the years. He'd made a life for him and Kurt, who happily had his own clothing line, which Blaine also paid for. They went to California and got married just for the hell of it. Kurt stayed with Blaine when he toured, but despite his lovers encouragement, he never joined him on stage.

Kurt would only ever sing to one person while he breathed. He and Blaine, in their early thirties , adopted a baby girl from the blond head cheerleader of the high school near their home. They named their child May, after the month that so much had happened in, and May Hummel-Anderson would be the only person to ever see Kurt sing again.

The day Kurt died was also on the cusp of summer. He and Blaine, aged, wrinkled and ready, content with their lives, sat on the beach in chairs, watching the waves. Blaine held Kurt's hand, and looked over at him, "I never stopped loving you."

But Kurt never responded, because he was gone. Blaine allowed himself a few private tears, a precious moment, before he called for someones help. He whispered into Kurt's ear, "I love you. I always did. You kept loving me when I was dead, and I will love you until the day I join you."

_Go ahead and burn it down_

_I'm drunk and so is everyone else_

_In this devil town._

It wasn't long after Kurt passed that Blaine followed. But it was peaceful, he held his daughters hand as she held a tape recorder to his ear. It was something she and Father had recorded years earlier. Blaine cried as he listened to it, listened to the sound of his lovers beautiful voice, the voice he hadn't heard in so many years. And their daughters angellic voice in addition to Kurt's.

"I love you, May." He whispered, "I'll tell your father you love him."

"I love you, Daddy. You can go now, Father is waiting." She kissed Blaine Anderson's forhead, a sad smile on her face.

Blaine closed his eyes and returned to that summer day, with his arm around Kurt, drawing hearts and letters on his shoulder, and gently drifted into an endless slumber.


End file.
